Don't watch this if you get seasick or have vertigo, abandoned big box stores.

[RKP5637]

I get the idea of what they were doing ... but my eyes were bouncing up and down by the end!

[Warpy]

1. K-Mart, looks like it's been closed only a few weeks

The plywood looks fresh and the parking lot is intact, no weeds growing up in it. By the end of the summer, it will look like it died years ago.

It's the end game of deregulated capitalism in which businesses are first monopolized, wages depressed, unemployment driven up, and commerce slows and finally stops.

Unless this is reversed and enormous fortunes redistributed downward, this country is over. It will take much of the rest of the world with it.

[RKP5637]

4. We have one here, it's huge. Apparently,

the guy that owned the building jacked the rent way way up and the big box store moved. They refused to pay the rent increase and left. Now, it sits empty year after year after year. Maybe the owner takes it as a tax write off. I have absolutely no idea. Fortunately, the outside is kept up, but it's so huge. It needs a big conglomerate to move in but I doubt that's coming.

This country is walking on the edge of a cliff. Of course in la la land we never really hear about it and are fed window dressing by MSM and politicians. We need a complete financial renaissance, a definition of what a job means, how wealth is distributed, etc., etc. One thing glaringly true is, our democracy is a joke, how can we have an extremely skewed distribution of wealth, politicians bought, vast sums of wealth in government and influencing/directing the country, corporations considered people ... and then say we have a democracy. It is such delusional thinking. So, we muddle along in this rut ... politicians on the take and/or clinging to what they can rip off from the country, others clueless, some taking the absurd greedy path and some trying to undermine the country.

Often the US reminds me of a building. The superstructure is rotting away toward collapse, but the facade looks just great from outside.

Sometimes I drive cross-country and some areas I go through look like third world countries. I often wonder how many Americans really see what is occurring, especially to the small towns and cities that once thrived unless they lived/live there.

[Warpy]

5. I think most people are a little irritated when a store they go to isn't there any more

but turn a blind eye to strip malls that look like a mouth full of bad teeth, blighted, empty stores with plywood windows between those that are still managing to hang on.

Your analogy is good, too. The facade is being kept up and the security guard is at his desk, but there is nothing in the interior but rot.

[Archae]

2. Reminds me of the abandoned Wal-Mart close to my place.

I know, "Abandoned Wal-Mart?"
The original Wal-Mart in Sheboygan closed, after they built two Supercenters here in Sheboygan, one on each end of town.

The building sat abandoned for years, until Festival Foods bought it, tore it down and rebuilt it into a Festival grocery store.

[Warpy]

6. The small one in my area is now occupied by Big Lots and The Dollar Store,

both of which are chipping away at Wally's profits because Wally's is now too expensive.

And our fearless leaders in Congress are utterly oblivious.

[RebelOne]

7. Same here. There is an abandoned Wal-Mart

about a mile from my house. They moved about 5 miles up the road. Some furniture company tried opening business in the abandoned building, but it is not doing too well. I expect to see that closed shortly.

[yuiyoshida]

3. gee...

its a good thing they weren't running!

[icymist]

8. Who filmed that? This guy???

[RKP5637]

9. LOL, must have been!

[amcgrath]

10. Boxstores

The modern day box store is the 21st century equivalent of a plague of locusts. They descend on towns and first demand that the town council grant them favours in return for building the store in their community. - Maybe the town will build the road, put in lighting, extend the electricity grid to the store at no charge. Often councillors are so keen to bring jobs to the town that they will make concessions such as no taxes to be paid for the first five years that a store is in operation.

The store opens and does well, people in the town can afford to shop there. Then the local clothing store can't compete and shuts down, then the hardware store, the auto repair centre, the supermarket etc. Within a few years, the only people working in the town are the people working at the box store - and since they are making box store wages, they can't afford to shop there. In fact the staff of the box store have been supported by the tax payer with welfare payments, food stamps etc, maybe going to a foodbank.

Once the customers stop coming, the boxstore packs up and leaves for another town. It leaves behind a town with every independent store and decent paying job gone. It has paid no taxes, and paid almost no wages, taken what money and prospects the town may have had and simply moved on.

[RKP5637]

11. Well said and welcome to DU!